Scott Horton, at Harper's, recommends an article in the latest Economist that's a lulu. I pass along the recommendation to "Under the weather: The conservative movement that for a generation has been the source of the Republican Party's strength is in the dumps."
Many conservative activists would like to pin the blame on Mr Bush alone—either because he pursued foolish policies (the paleo-conservative version) or because he pursued sensible policies in a cack-handed manner (the neoconservative version). William Buckley, the conservative movement's pope, says that, if Mr Bush were the leader of a parliamentary system, “it would be expected that he would retire or resign.” Bruce Bartlett, a former Reagan-administration economist, accuses him of “betraying” the conservative movement. Other conservatives would like to pin the blame on the Republican Party. “We have to recognise that this was a defeat for Republicans, not for conservatives,” Newt Gingrich, a former Speaker of the House, argued after the 2006 mid-term elections.
In fact, the Republican Party in Congress is just as responsible as Mr Bush for most of the recent troubles. The Republican majority routinely appropriated more spending than the president asked for. It also larded spending bills with as much extra pork as possible. The number of congressional “earmarks” for projects in members' districts increased from 1,300 in 1994, when the Republicans took over Congress, to 14,000 in 2005.
The Republican majority also cheered Mr Bush all the way to Baghdad. Add to this the corruption of congressmen like Tom DeLay, a conservative hero, and the semi-corrupt institutional relationship that the Republicans formed with lobbyists, and you see that Mr Bush was only part of a much bigger problem.
Horton thinks predictions are a bit dire. After all, the perps -- from Bush and Cheney to DeLay -- aren't really conservatives. True. I do agree with him wholeheartedly when he writes:
The fundamental error in the Economist’s analysis is in suggesting that an administration that engaged in the most obscene deficit spending in the country’s history, that mortgaged the country’s future, that engaged in foreign military adventurism at the drop of a hat, and that—while lecturing us all about big government—grotesquely inflated the size of the state has any legitimate claim to the label “conservative.”
It’s absurd. We’ve had a group of radical kleptocrats in control. If the Republicans disavow them and return to policies in the range of Eisenhower, or even of Reagan, they won’t have that much to fear at the polls, even if the White House is delivered to the hands of their competitors for a while.
The United States needs a robust, healthy, two-party system. Right now I don’t know which party is ailing more. I’m disgusted with both of them.
Though I have claws out for anyone who writes that awful, overused word "robust" -- a word whose current use goes right back to Bush-Rove handbook of agitprop -- I think Horton is exactly right that we need the checks and balances of two parties of good faith. Of good faith -- not the devil's political spawn that we're dealing with these days in both parties. Of good faith -- and with working oversight.
I want a much stronger party of the left. Left, I said, not "Democratic," because there's nothing about the Democratic party these days that has much to do with the left. When we get the left back, then it would be healthy to have a good conservative counterbalance, a democratic dialogue, a yin and yang, a struggle between two parties keeping a close eye on each other.
Two-party system. Remember? The Economist concludes:
The Republicans have failed the most important test of any political movement—wielding power successfully. They have botched a war. They have splurged on spending. And they have alienated a huge section of the population. It is now the Democrats' game to win or lose.
Sad to say, I think centrist Democrats who have been in charge of the party for well over a decade have also failed to wield power successfully. They have failed to stop a botched war. They have continued to endorse spending on the botched war. Vide post-11/06 Congress.
